You can have no higher Paradise than to be with a trumpeter, or even to know one, or to have heard of one, or to share the same planet as one. You are fortunate indeed, and thrice-blessed, Amos, that you know more than one trumpeter. No other instrument is so God-like, so heavenly, so close to the Music of the Spheres and no other musician is so godlike.

Mom has always been partial to High Tea, which is why she loves it when Bobert comes to call.

It is a cold morning in Oakland, Mom, far too chilly to dance naked with Presidents. Under other circumstances, though, it would be an interesting opportunity.

Dark African coffee hand pressed by the best barista in town; the silver notes of Barky practicing her cascades in the next room; and the morning airs from Lake Merritt wafting over the city's waking streets. Who could ask for more?

Let it stand a bit and toss a handful of sand or salt in to settle the leaves.

Amos is NOT going to a concert "up north." He's a secret member of the Bohemians and he's going to the Bohemian Grove to carouse naked with other (male) pseudo-movers-'n'-shakers. Come to think of it, they will be ACTUAL "movers and shakers" as the prance around nekkid in the Grove. Cheney, W, Amos, Kim Il Sung, Prince Charles -- all prancing around moving and shaking, drinking too much beer....

MOM, I'll be head-first into the eBay stuff today, but I'll try to remember to come check on you. But let's get you started with a simple breakfast. Homemade (of course! No freezer section for us) buttermilk pancakes, a sliced apple (I'm in a hurry) and a cuppa hot tea. Better use the sieve when you pour it into your cup--the tea ball opened up in the pot.

I dunno -- this one has a pedigree (a vellum document with the names of the caretakers) which goes way, way back. In fact, the bottom of the cup is etched with "This Is JC's Grail, MDCXXX Via Cerise, Nazareth. If found return to owner or be smitten with boils and worse." The first name on the vellum is "Mariam of Magdela, Easter, AD 29. Screw this crap, I'm off to Cannes."

You had it--it was never in Idaho, but it wasn't in Minnesota, either. Rapaire was pulling your leg, or if there is an object there, it is bogus. It was in a Dwyer attic in Connecticut for years and years. Then it travelled to Tejas.

It is a dark--nay, tragic--reflection on modern life that an object once so revered and so decorated with legend and moral narrative and fine mythic example, should be named in the same sentence as the terrible neologism "de-cluttering", a Walmart word if ever there was one.

So...did you sneak off to Idaho and smuggle it across Interstate lines from Rapaire's? Or did Rapaire steal it from you while the bidding was going on? Or is Rapaire just making up his end of the story?

Aren't you clever, Amos! It was included in part of my de-cluttering project as I move some stuff out of here. The grail didn't go for much on eBay; it was supposed to go in the collectible -> antiquities -> priceless vessels category, but I'd had a little wine that evening when I was listing it and it ended up in the collectible -> vessels -> tug boat category, who knows how, but it did. Tugs don't go for much these days. They're high maintenance. The winning bid was $2.39.

A one-dimensional universe would preclude the circle, because if a circle were included it would have diameter AND would be effectively infinite (although a straight line could be of infinite length). No circle, no pi.

As for the grail, it was entrusted to me three years ago by an old man, a descendant of Percival (or Parsifal, if you prefer). He had no descendants and was the last of his line, so he entrusted it to the only person he knew who was "sans peur et sans reproche." He -- his surname was Dulac and I never knew his first name -- died very shortly thereafter and was "buried at sea" in what remains of Gray's Lake. I wasn't at his funeral and so cannot verify the stories about it so I shan't repeat them here.

Well, sir, you have been hoist by your own petard, there. Indeed, the Grail could never have come from the Holy Land to your house--not even if Perceval, or Saint Clair himself, had borne it--if this were a one dimensional universe. For your house was never extant when they had it, nor anywhere near where they had it when it finally showed up. So two dimensions is clearly your minimum, even if they walked over the waters and straight to Idaho, which no-one in their right mind would want to do.

No finer linen will arise therefrom, as by the fairest thread, and not the greatest number, thy loom is known.

Oh, by the way:

"In Wolfram von Eschenbach's telling, the Grail was kept safe at the castle of Munsalvaesche (mons salvationis), entrusted to Titurel, the first Grail King. Some, not least the monks of Montserrat, have identified the castle with the real sanctuary of Montserrat in Catalonia, Spain. Other stories claim that the Grail is buried beneath Rosslyn Chapel or lies deep in the spring at Glastonbury Tor. Still other stories claim that a secret line of hereditary protectors keep the Grail, or that it was hidden by the Templars in Oak Island, Nova Scotia's famous "Money Pit", while local folklore in Accokeek, Maryland says that it was brought to the town by a closeted priest aboard Captain John Smith's ship. Turn of the century accounts state that Irish partisans of the Clan Dhuir (O'Dwyer, Dwyer) transported the Grail to the United States during the 19th Century and the Grail was kept by their descendents in secrecy in a small abbey in the upper-Northwest (now believed to be Southern Minnesota)"

As the direct heiress of the D(w)yer clan, I'd like to know what you know about smuggling the Holy Grail to the Pacific Northwest or Southern Minnesota, whichever comes first.

In all this going to and fro, this sturm and drang given and received, one constant in these hallowed halls has been pi.

We should learn from this to be more radial and take our positions diametrically, and to be, too, more centered and less absorbed in perimetrical matters. What goes a-round becomes, in turn, the center of dicourse.

So, Mario....you resist my attempts to provoke political controversy at the higher levels of the MOABS? Well, sir, perhaps you will escape the concern and zealous scrutiny of the party operatives at this time. We shall see.

You are attempting to supplant a ruling member of the Gang of Three, MMario. To do that is to verge into dangerous territory which can best be described as "counterrevolutionary" or perhaps even..."revisionist"!

Amos, I really don't know what I would do without your earnest efforts to save me from my...dare I say it?...."jejeunite"...if there is such a word (please place an accent mark on the final 'e'). I am eternally grateful for your solicitous and compassionate concern on my behalf. ;-)

MEbbe, maybe not, If there's nothing much he can do to harm it, surely he could find some more effective way to advance it out of the miasmic quicksand of manic irrelevance in which it has found itself lately?

So...lemme see if I have this straight. Having become frustrated in your attempts to become a Gigolo to the Stars, a Has-Been Talent agent, and a P.T. Barnum of Imaginary Animals, with Alcoholic Juvenile Delinquents as a sideshow, you are now setting forth on a new career as an Extreme Ideological Rabblerouser?

I dunno, Hawkster. Seems the old expression "Get a Life" might have been coined with you in mind. You may end up starting serious damage to Western Civ if you go on at this rate.

Get with it, Stilly! You're losing ground here in the posting totals and your once secure place as one third of the Central Ruling Triumvirate of the MOABS is being threatened by a sly putsch being launched by MMario!

Running Dog interventionists must not be allowed to hatch their nefarious schemes!

I have a hundred thousand fanatical young MOABists ready to spring into action and subject MMario to a public show trial where he will be forced to recant and apologize for his crimes against the People.